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Legal Life 2020: The end of the traditional lawyer
With the advent of technology, the rise in outsourcing legal processes, and the proliferation of online self-lawyering tools for non-lawyers, by 2020 some roles of the traditional lawyer may…
With the advent of technology, the rise in outsourcing legal processes, and the proliferation of online self-lawyering tools for non-lawyers, by 2020 some roles of the traditional lawyer may have all but disappeared as the general market demands that legal processes are undertaken more cheaply and efficiently.
This is a theme that author Richard Susskind touched on in his book, The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of the legal profession, in the year 2008 - which built on predictions he made as far back as 1996. His idea was that it would be difficult for the role of the traditional lawyer to be sustained in the coming years because of the market pull towards the commoditisation of legal services and the role of information technology.
However, that's not to say that Susskind predicted the end of a profession - instead he said that lawyers would need to accept that their workloads might be undertaken differently in the years to come, and should seek to adapt their roles accordingly. Susskind wrote that "the challenge is not how to assess how commoditisation and IT might threaten the current work of lawyers, so that the traditional ways can be protected and change avoided. It is to find and embrace better, quicker, less costly, more convenient and publicly valued ways of working."
Already, these dynamics of change are in force. Susskind predicted that the legal world would find itself over-resourced - this has been witnessed as large law firms the world over have shed staff. Susskind also predicted that the profession would increasingly seek to drive out inefficiencies - a process also being seen through the outsourcing of legal services and the scaling back of operations and use of technology for process improvements. "In so doing," said Susskind, "we will indeed witness the end of outdated legal practice and the end of outdated lawyers."
